Basu: Don't let Brady's sacrifice be in vain

Some of the most powerful lessons about what is good for a nation begin with one person's tragedy. But too often, they're not implemented until more people are martyred to the cause.

When he went to work as Ronald Reagan's press secretary in 1981, James Brady could scarcely have imagined that gun control advocacy would become his life's purpose. His boss had touted Second Amendment rights in his presidential campaign.

With his signature, President Reagan made it easier to transport guns between states and ended federal record-keeping on ammunition sales.

But the attempted assassination two months into Reagan's administration that injured him and left Brady paralyzed turned Brady and his wife, Sarah, into influential gun-reform activists.

Brady died Monday at 73 — 33 years after becoming collateral damage to John Hinckley Jr.'s twisted fantasies about killing the president to win the affections of actress Jodie Foster.

"There are few Americans in history who are as directly responsible for saving as many lives," Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said.

Brady's signature achievement is the law that bears his name. The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act requires federal background checks on gun purchases. According to Gross, it has blocked 2 million gun sales to criminals, domestic abusers and other dangerous people.

Reagan did eventually come around. The former president who once wrote in Guns & Ammo magazine that gun control is pointless because murder can't be prevented, wrote a 1991 New York Times opinion piece, saying the 1981 shooting might not have happened if the Brady Bill had been law then.

Reagan later joined former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in calling on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban — which still hasn't happened.

Meanwhile, the number of gun fatalities has inched steadily upward. Congress has passed no significant gun control measures since 1993. It is now legal to carry a concealed weapon in all 50 states, according to the National Gun Victims Action Council, a nonprofit network of gun victims, survivors and the faith community.

We've gotten used to seeing bodies — even tiny ones — carried out of schools, colleges, movie theaters and places of worship on the nightly news. Twenty-one states have recently taken it upon themselves to enact gun laws, but there is more to be done.

The National Gun Victims Action Council offers a common-sense set of proposals that could make us all safer without taking away gun owners' rights. They include: that every gun owner be licensed and every gun be registered and insured; that criminals, mentally ill people and those legally prohibited from buying guns be barred from buying them at gun shows or over the Internet; that no one be allowed to carry guns into restaurants, bars, schools and other gathering places; and that every gun have a smart trigger so it can only fire after recognizing the owner's fingerprint.

Part of the national organization's approach is to lobby corporations to prohibit guns from their premises in the same way the anti-smoking campaign did to get rid of second-hand cigarette smoke. Starbucks, Sonic Drive-In, Chipotle, Jack in the Box and Target already ask that patrons not carry guns into their stores, according to the organization.

It's unfortunate that it has to take tragedies before politicians muster up the fortitude to say no to a lobby or a political stance.

Real life can intrude on hard-line stances. But when it does, it can have an impact.

Let's not let Brady's life pass without dedicating ourselves to sensible gun safety measures. We don't need another human face to attach to the cause. We have enough legacies now, from Tucson, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, Aurora, Newtown and beyond, to have this lesson learned.